As a loyal reader of this weekly series you know, (even at my advanced age) I am not ashamed of being obsessed with Led Zeppelin, so it is no surprise that Stairway toHeaven is my favorite classic rock song of all time.

When I hear it on the car radio it still “makes me wonder” what is the force that commands me to sit in the car listening to the very end – even after I have reached my destination.

But do not expect to hear it played at Robert Plant’s funeral some day because apparently he “loathes” the song.

So why is this 41-year-old eight minute masterpiece with the mysterious lyrics #1 on the “greatest ever” charts?

For starters, unlike most rock songs there is no repeat chorus. Instead the song slowly climbs, like musical stairs, up to an explosive instrumental segment where Jimmy Page shows us whyhe is Jimmy Page. After which Robert Plant launches into his “rock god” falsetto voice and in the process releases enough raw sexual power and energy to set off a musical “orgasm.”

Maybe that is why generations of young men and women love this song. It symbolizes pure passion without any commitment!

Curious about what my contemporaries now think of Stairway to Heaven I asked two old friends, who both happen to be musically hip aging baby boomers (aging exceptionally well I might add.)

The first, a media consultant who often appears on national cable news shows responded with this pithy one line email: “Stairway to Heaven was the soundtrack to my life in high school.”

The other is a classic rock radio DJ, so I consider his comments about Stairway to Heaven to be “expert opinion.”

He emailed: “Yes, I do like it….it’s ingrained into the fabric of my life!”

Interesting how both these comments reflect a “life” impact.

Then Mr. Classic Rock DJ continues his email with this startling calculation:

I’ve been on the radio for around 34 years….and played Stairway at least once or twice a week…

Let’s look at the numbers… (This is the low ball figure)

Song is about 8 minutes long…

8 minutes times 52 weeks = 416 minutes or 6.9 Hours

6.9 hours times 34 years = 234.6 hours

234.6 hours divided by 24 hours in a day = 9.8 days

10 days of my life have been spent listening to “Stairway.”

That’s just on the air….doesn’t include the amount of times

I heard the song from 1971 (when it came out) to 1978 when

I started in radio!

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My takeaway on the song…

“No matter how much opulence she displays on the planet, she still can’t buy her way into the Kingdom!”

Was that the message of Robert Plant’s infamous lyrics? For decades later questions still remain over whether Stairway to Heaven’s music and message was divinely inspired or satanic.

While contemplating heaven or hell may I suggest a nice bubbly to further stimulate the brain.

In past columns, I mentioned my fondness for Prosecco (Italian Sparking Wine) which is growing in popularity because of its light pleasing taste.

Myra Adams is a media producer, writer, and political observer who served on the McCain Ad Council during the 2008 McCain campaign, and on the 2004 Bush campaign creative team. Her columns have appeared on PJ Media, National Review, The Daily Beast, The Daily Caller, RedState, BizPacReview and Liberty Unyielding. . Myra's web site TheJesusStore.com contributes all profits to Christian charity. Follow Myra on Twitter @MyraKAdams

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1.
Fail Burton

For those who were around at the time and listening to rock, the secret of the song’s success is no mystery. Led Zeppelin was very popular at the time and considered quite the opposite of Top 40 or what hair bands who emulated them would later become. As a heavy rock band, no one had more credibility than Led Zeppelin, despite the third album, which took the foot off the pedal a bit.

So, when Led Zeppelin put out an innovative song with a rousing structure no one had ever quite heard before that ran the gamut from quiet to nuts, it was a smash. I read the link about the reason for the song’s success being due to it’s length and DJs taking cig breaks and that’s bunk. That song was simply really popular. Underground radio stations had broken out of the 3 min. Top 40 rule a few years earlier so the length of the song was neither a barrier or a selling point – it was what it was.

As for today, I have a burn out point and can’t listen to it anymore nor have I for years. But it was really a barn burner and a game changer when it came out, like the entirety of the earlier Led Zeppelin II album.

Today, years after the fact and with the movie “Spinal Tap,” people have forgotten the context of the band’s music and how ground breaking it was. The hair bands who followed in the ’70s and into the ’80s all mimicked Led Zeppelin and it’s really there where the self-parody happened.

Today, the drummer, bass player and guitar have become little more than machine sounds for some voice and music is nowhere near as exciting. Being young is its own excitement but there’s little doubt today’s rock and roll is its own self-parody of people squinching up their faces as they sing trying to make you believe they’re feeling a real emotion in front of embarrassing and empty arrangements.

I love this song. It is firmly embedded in my neural circuits from hippocampus to frontal cortex. I can replay it in my head at will. The whole eight minutes I can hear every note.

It is actually complex and difficult technically but sounds clean and simple to the listener. The lyrics might sound sanctimonious to the jaded critic but still find a welcome place in the boomer liturgy; Our psalm 23.

We go to the neighborhood wine club each month. I am not so great at describing the wine but some people are. You drink and then say something about it. If I had to talk about this song like wine I would say It follows a basic rock 4/4 rhythm but accents are unexpected 8th note offbeats with distinct tempo changes leading to the guitar solo climax and soft smooth finish. It has emotional charge. Many a gen x was conceived while this was playing…

With spicy oak and citrus accents. Always add that and it will sound good.

I never got into Zeppelin. I was always more of a Black Sabbath, Kiss, AC/DC kind of guy.

Jimmy Page, as famous as he became, was a sloppy guitar player. He never had the technical mastery that Tony Iommi had.

And Robert Plant? He was never the front man that Paul Stanley or Bon Scott was.

And forget about Mick Jagger, the greatest front man who ever lived.

Led Zeppelin bores me. I can always tell when someone doesn’t know rock and roll. They start talking about Led Zeppelin, as if that was the band that everyone listened to. Sorry, it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Kiss, and AC/DC. Led Zeppelin was a wet dream waiting to happen.

Front man: Freddie Mercury. Managed to be flamboyant and outrageous, but without taking away from his band or making his band despise him. It’s difficult to find anyone else who ever did that.

I agree with your conclusion. I was a teenager in the ’70s. No one I hung with was into LZ. We all found them overrated. I knew a lot of Beatles fans, Yes fans and (shudder!) Floyd fans, but no Zep fans.

What a couple of strange comments. Led Zeppelin II was released in late 1969 – it changed everything. Just because you don’t get that in terms of that album’s place in history and how it influenced other bands doesn’t mean the ’70s was the year zero. Led Zeppelin was dead in the ’70s – of course people weren’t listening to them like before.

This original creation and evolution of heavy metal happened at the speed of light and before the end of 1971 that first burst was dead and gone. You can actually see the transition literally split albums in two like with Led Zeppelin IV or even arguably III, and Every Picture Tells a story. We’re talking about a very short life-span here; 1967-71.

Every important album that formed the basis for heavy metal rock after 1971 was put out during this era and that era died as fast as it began. Everything starting with 1972 is simply a different era and generation with a severe dividing line.

Deja Vu, Layla, the Stones most important albums, Led Zeppelin I and II, Grand Funk Live, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Cream, Traffic, Blind Faith, Hendrix, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane; the basis had been formed prior to 1972. The movement was dead after 1971. Even underground comix and radio were never the same. The ground had been broken, seeded and abandoned.

That’s not to say there was not a lot of great music put out after 1971; there certainly was – but that essential raw soulfulness and innovation was gone, never to return. You certainly can’t argue that Queen, Kiss or AC/DC had that. The repetition factory started, no matter how cleverly done.

It’s a question of history and who came first and who came second. This is not a question of taste but of what actually happened when and who influenced who. If there is no Led Zeppelin, can one argue Queen, Kiss and AC/DC would’ve existed as they were? I don’t think so. Bands like The Beatles, the Stones and Led Zeppelin’s influence is so great it simply cannot be escaped.

Not one single band from that 1967-71 time frame ever did as good a work either. It was simply something one could not recapture. There’s what we like, and what came first.

The music died in 1972! I agree with you about the significance of Zeppelin, but with a slight twist. It really wasn’t that far from The Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin and the early version of Zeppelin actually first played as The New Yardbirds. I was a “garage band” musician in ’66 and to my parents’ outrage when they learned of it went to see the movie “Blow Up.” The scene with The Yardbirds playing the old juke joint tune “Stroll On” jerked me right up; I’d never heard anything like it and I wanted to hear more and learn how to play it. That led me into the world of English album music. Trying to play it first required far more virtuosity than the seemingly simple-sounding music gave you to believe on first hearing, virtuosity we didn’t really have and to the extent that we could play some Yardbirds, Who, Kinks, et al. credibly, you couldn’t play much of it and keep your crowd at high school and college dances in the South, which meant you couldn’t make any money playing it. I’m sure you know, but for the young’uns, the actual sound track of the Sixties was a lot more like The Big Chill than like Woodstock.

In any event, I first saw Zeppelin at the Atlanta outdoor festival in ’69 and it struck me the same way that first sight and sound of The Yardbirds in that basement night club in “Blow Up” did but it was that sound dramatically amplified, and much smoother and more developed and then, as you say, they evolved it to a different level, almost a different genre with songs like Dazed and Confused. They closed their performance in ’69 with “Dazed and Confused.” I saw them the next year and they opened with it and went from there to places I didn’t know existed musically – ‘course the acid was pretty good, too. So, back to my quibble, at least with the more “rock ‘n roll” or “power rock” stuff, Zeppelin didn’t invent the sound but were the inheritors of The Yardbirds. They did evolve into their own genre but stood on some awfully talented shoulders and they were the first band who could do that kind of music anywhere other than on the back of an album and make real money doing it.

I guess I was talking about actual albums that were released nationally and even internationally that had the potential to have a wide influence on strangers rather than the subtler though very real influences band-to-band through musicians personal contacts and experiences.

And I was talking about a slightly darker, less poppy and harder edged type of music that was wonderfully NOT overproduced on the albums. Big Brother and the Holding Company is still an amazing album to listen to today. Hell, they all are and I’m still amazed at that 67-71 run where so many people seemed to be on the same page in one sense but wildly eccentric and with their own distinct sounds in another sense.

People forget that for years Grand Funk Live was the most popular hard rock live album ever made. Of course, that’s no longer the case because so much has happened. 4-5 years seems so long and eventful when you’re young. 67-71. That was an outpouring of creativity and diverse sounds that seems mind boggling in retrospect. Virtually everything that came after is a copy from that template in some way.

All that context gets lost with the passage of time and some of it earlier on. I still can’t believe Grand Funk isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s absurd. In their day, they were huge, influential and unique. I’m talking about before that We’re An American Band crap.

Zep were high energy for the time, as Musicians they were poor to mediocre.
It all depends on taste, of course. Personally, I don’t think anything by Zep is as good as Adele. “Rolling in the Deep’ is a classic.
“Hips Don’t Lie” was past 1 BILLION hits when you tube pulled the original. The new one is @ 99, 845,540 views. Several covers are in the 1 to 3 million range.
‘course I really don’t think it is fair to compare prehistoric music to modern, 21st century music. On the other hand, imagine Bach or Mozart with a synthesizer.

I was never a Zeppelin fan, but respected them, and after listening to what mostly has followed them since, can understand their iconic status for many. And, I’m not too sure what professional musicians you’re talking about, but my best friend, a professional guitarist, considers Page to be a genius.

Stairway to heaven is a bore. It’s not even the best song on its album. As someone who heard it on an almost endless loop growing up, I am happy to still have the reflexes to change the radio station within the first 6 chords of that overrated slog.

Led Zeppelin was basically a rhythm and blues band. They had some good songs. “Thank You” off of II was their best. And they did dabble in some Tolkien mythology on IV, so I listened to their albums. But their music didn’t move me.

I never saw them live. I’ve seen films of them live, but they didn’t impress me.

There are several bands that I always wanted to see but never had the opportunity: Queen, Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC, among others. Actually, I did have the opportunity to see AC/DC, but I was at a drama tournament in Corpus chasing drama girls when they came down here and rocked the Villa Real. I showed up at school on Monday, and everyone was wearing Highway to Hell t-shirts. I was like, what’s up with all of these Highway to Hell t-shirts? “Dude, AC/DC rocked the Villa Real.” It broke my heart. I traded getting laid by a drama queen for seeing AC/DC. Bon Scott died three months later.

It was the same with Lynyrd Skynyrd. I had tickets to their show in San Antonio. They were one of my favorite bands. But their plane crashed a month before the show.

I saw Van Halen. They sucked. David Lee Roth kept forgetting the words, and the band would have to stop and start over. We booed them off the stage.

That was in San Antonio, which is the heavy metal capitol of the world. We were there to see Black Sabbath, not some loser band that got out of the garage too early. It was the largest capacity crowd ever in the Hemisphere Arena, even larger than Elvis. 18,000 packed into a 15,000 seat arena. It was standing room only, and the standing room was sold out, as were all the seats. Every heavy metal freak in Texas was there.

Black Sabbath came out, and about 20 minutes into their set, Tony Iommi’s amp blew out. Ozzy Osbourne came out and said, “Disco Sucks!” Bill Ward and Geezer Butler did a drum and bass improvisation solo for about 45 minutes, until the amp was fixed. Then Black Sabbath came back and played the best set I’ve ever seen. This was in front of the most discriminating heavy metal audience in the world. They had something to prove, and they proved it. They rocked that arena for almost two hours.

The next week “Disco Sucks” t-shirts were being sold everywhere.

I first saw Kiss when they were at their peak, 1978 the Love Gun tour. It was the opening show. I’m telling you, it was impressive–explosions, lights, pillars of fire, levetating platforms, a blood-spitting, fire-breathing demon, burning guitars by a space alien, a dancing star-faced singer, and a cat drummer who played his heart out.

The next day Alive II was released. We went down to the record store to get tickets for the second show. There were crates and crates of albums stacked on the wall. There were more copies of Alive II than there were copies of all other albums in the store combined. Say what you want about Kiss, but you’ll never see a performance or a release like that.

I saw the Greatful Dead at Manor Downs, which is a race horse track, on their all acoustic tour. Kicking back on the grass, listening to the Dead. It was excellent. The thing about the Dead is that they had their own, personally designed acoustic system. Every string, every cymbol could be clearly heard, outdoors.

I saw the Rolling Stones at the Cotton Bowl. 95,000 people sang along to every song. It was like a religous experience. The funny thing was that I took a bus tour. There were these two Mexican nationals sitting in front of me, and all they spoke was Spanish. But when they got to the stadium, they sang all of the words to all of the songs in English.

People who talk about Led Zeppelin as if they were the definition of rock and roll don’t know what they’re talking about. The Who didn’t fill stadiums like Queen. And the only band to play before a larger audience than Kiss is . . . wait for it, Alice Cooper.

Led Zeppelin is yesterday’s hippie band. They had a couple of good songs, and that’s about it. They did not rock the world.

Metal has a childish streak at it’s heart but even Led Zeppelin didn’t have moronic memes like “We will rock you,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,” or “Let There Be Rock” which, together with Alice Cooper resides closer to The Monkees or the frickin’ Banana Splits or Nickelodeon for that matter than than blues for adults.

Your second generation of bands were not musically innovative relatively speaking and included with your bands the whole mess of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Styx, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, Boston and Kansas is just that, a mess. 11 yr. olds went to Kiss concerts and the 2nd lead singer for AC/DC is the luckiest truck driver who ever lived. His screeching is like fingernails over a blackboard. Before Robert Plant, no one had sung like that – he was the first. After, everyone was.

I went through my Led Zeppelin phase & always thought the song which closes out side two of that album, “When The Levee Breaks” to be their crowning achievement. No Led Zeppelin song packs the power that one does. As someone mentioned above I also developed Led Zeppelin fatigue & I haven’t played one of their albums going on four years now. The classic rock radio format sucks & is killing the classic rock era with it’s insistence on only playing 2 to 3 of the most popular songs over & over again by each band deemed the be “classic rock”. In the trade I work in I work with apprentices who usually have the local classic rock radio station blasting away in the company van while picking up materials for a job. Eventually after working a few days together I & the apprentice would usually embark on a game of “Guess Which Song Comes On Next” by, name any “classic rock” artist. Classic rock radio is SO predictable that more often than not I, or the apprentice could guess the next classic rock song to be played by any “classic rock” artist. Pathetically boring is the only way to describe “classic rock” radio. Would I want “Stairway To Heaven” played at my funeral? No, but not out of dislike for it. I’d rather hear something by this version of this band. Their original lead guitarist was without compare in his prime & sadly he is all but forgotten today thanks to the likes of “classic rock” radio. You will NEVER hear anything by this lineup of this band on “classic rock” radio. Enjoy:http://youtu.be/RtmW2ek7WkQhttp://youtu.be/Kto6hSgKYlkhttp://youtu.be/qmi8XXhnZ7I

It was when it first came out. I think it stays at the top out of convention more than merit. You tell the younger generation it’s the greatest and they believe it and pass the same BS on to the next generation.

I don’t claim to know what the greatest rock song is but I know it isn’t Stairway.

And i’m a big Zeppelin fan. been so before they got popular stayed so after they broke up.

I think even the band doesn’t think it’s their greatest song (if you can get them away from their publicists.)

Lyrically it’s a mess and the instrumentals are mediocre at best compared to other things they did.

It should be used in a “Don’t Do Drugs” commercial as a bad example of whyat can happen from too much drug use; you and others believe the hype that record companies put out.